Title-Behind The Mask
Chapter 1/?
Disclaimer-I do not own Willow or Tara or anything to do with the Buffyverse universe, I’m just a fanfiction writer.
Rating-PG-13 for now but it will change.
Summary-After Willow rescues a strange girl from a vampire attack, she is curious to find out who is behind the mask.
Notes-This is a more *realistic* version of my Witness Protection fic, after someone pointed out to me the faults in my other one. Only Tara is in hiding this time. I would really like to thank ObsidianEsper for betaing my fic and pointing out the bits that needed to be changed. And also for coming up with the alternate name for Tara. Alia means “immigrant to a new home” and is both pretty and perfect for this situation. Writing in italic is thoughts, writing in both bold and italic is flashbacks or dreams.
Feedback-I love feedback. (sorry for not putting that in before, it was late at night and I was tired.)
Chapter One-Detour
Willow Rosenberg checked carefully that she had everything that she might need for the dangerous but necessary work of Slaying.
Let’s see…stake, check. Bottles of holy water check. Crucifix around my neck, check. Not that a small crucifix has much effect on vampires, but there is always a chance that it might help me. My small Book of Shadows, with the most useful spells, check. My mobile phone to call Buffy in an emergency, check. No need for swords or axes or spears or the like unless I know I’m fighting demons. Although the chance of being caught, searched and arrested by the cops for carrying weapons are low, going heavily armed is just asking for trouble. I can’t really deal with demons anyway. Demon trouble equals run to Buffy. It’s a good thing the demons are rarer and not as violent as the vampires are or we really would be in trouble.
She looked around her house, knowing that there was a chance every time she went out to help Buffy and Faith keep the vampire population down, she might not come back at all. Or worse still, she could come back undead and ready and willing to feast on her friends.
Girlfriend…no, I don’t have that yet. A girl with lovely blonde hair and sapphire blue eyes, who is cute and funny and loves me for who I am, and who I could teach the skills of magic to until she becomes as experienced a witch as I am. And someone who would not be scared to work with stake and spell to fight the evil within this town until we can finally find a way to close the Hellmouth once and for all.
She quietly set off towards one of the many cemeteries of Sunnydale, a town that everybody knew had far more cemeteries then it’s size should warrant, even given that Americans as a whole were far more likely to be buried after death then cremated. It was easiest and best to stake the newly sired vampires as they crawled disorientated from their graves, rather then having to take on an old vampire that might have had an unlife of centuries and be crafty, hard to even locate, and be hugely adept at fighting. For reasons that even Giles did not fully know, all vampires knew the martial arts to an extent as well as possessing their great strengths, and old ones that had gained the time to sharpen their skills were as good as those humans who had earned a black belt in karate.
If they weren’t such skilled fighters it would make my task so much easier.
When she was halfway to the cemetery she heard a scream from an alleyway. A female scream. Right, detour. Whoever it is I have to help them. In the shadows she saw a girl around her age that had just been slammed up against a wall by a vampire, his mouth open and his fangs exposed as he prepared to sink his fangs into her neck.
Ah, a vampire. I know how to deal with them. It would be harder to deal with it if it were a human thug. Most of my spells would either be too deadly to cast or take too long in a combat situation…careful Willow, this is no time for babbling. One wrong step here and I could end up on the menu. Batten down the hatches…
“You…you stop right there or I’ll call the police.” It’s a bluff of course, partly as we Scoobies work outside the law and partly as there would be no time for them to arrive in time but it should make him charge. Hostage situations get ugly…
The vampire turned and stared angrily at her for a few seconds before hurling the girl aside and leaping at her with his arms outstretched and his fangs agape. Willow shut her eyes, pulled out her wand and spoke the last word of a spell that took rather a long time to cast, but could be saved, much as a flintlock pistol of centuries ago took a long time to load but could then be carried around loaded until the trigger was pulled. There was a short flash of light that Willow could almost see through her screwed-shut eyes and then she opened them just in time to see the vampire crumble into dust. She grinned. Another one bites the dust. Then she went over to the girl and helped her to her feet.
“Are you all right?”
“He…he was going to kill me. I thought I would be safe here…”
“He’s gone now, you’re safe. You must be new to this town. It’s a pretty safe place by day but at night, the bad guys really do come out. I’ll escort you home if you want.”
“He was a monster, those fangs…”
“Are you sure you weren’t seeing things?”
This is the time I wish I had one of those Men In Black nuro-whatsits. Mind you, maybe it would be good to be able to have another friend who really knows what’s happening here.
“What’s your name?”
She looks all right now that I can see her better, not perfect but OK. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, a decent body and what a rack…Willow, get your mind out of the gutter!
The girl sighed sadly. “My name is… Alia. Alia Baylee. And I don’t want to go home with all those…monsters around. What if they break into my house?”
"Don't worry about that Alia. Vampires, because that is what those monsters are, can't get into the houses of living people without an invitation by the homeowners. So if someone you don't asks to be invited in after dark, be careful and if in doubt then turn them down. It's better to be safe than sorry."
“Please don’t go…don’t leave me here, there might be more of these things.”
Willow looked her up and down.
What I should really do is escort her home but it’s not every night that one rescues a damsel in distress. And she might make a good friend in the future. I'd like to take her back to my house and introduce her to the Scoobies, but I doubt she would want to come home with me, a total stranger.
“If you like I’ll escort you to your home.”
What I should really do is go on to the cemetery and risk my life once more fighting with the pointy-teeth undead, but I’m not a Slayer like Buffy or Faith, I just help the Slayers and it won’t make much of a difference if I take one night off.
Trying to push out from her mind images of a grumpy Buffy waggling her finger at her as if she were a naughty puppy who had piddled on the floor, she escorted Alia back to her home, keeping a careful lookout for any more wandering vampires.
On the way Alia started shuddering and crying. “They lied. They told me that I would be safe here. It…iiiii…it’ll be safe they s-said. They…they didn’t s…s…say that monsters were roaming the streets.”
What is wrong with that girl? OK, she was nearly fanged to death by something that is supposed to exist only in myths and legends and that would panic most people. But who are they? Undead of some kind that tricked her into coming here?
Alia wiped her eyes as they walked under a bright streetlight and they suddenly changed colour from brown to a brilliant blue. Willow jumped back for a moment before realizing that Alia had been wearing coloured contact lenses. As she was about to replace them, Willow blurted out “You have such beautiful eyes? Why change their colour?”
“Because I…I…I have to or….” Alia fell silent as if she felt she had said too much already. “I like having brown eyes.” she said sadly.
When they got to Alia’s house, Willow took her by the hands. “You don’t need to hide your beauty from me. You’re safe here, the vamps can’t get you and believe me, I have some very powerful friends who won’t take kindly to anybody who dares threaten you. But before I can help you properly I need to know everything. Who are you running from and why? You can’t be a citizen of Sunnydale; most of them stay indoors at this time of night. You can trust me not to betray you.”
“It’s a long story. It started when…” Suddenly she stopped, her blue eyes clouded with tears and she stared into space.
Willow stared at her and thought I wonder what she is thinking about? Whatever it is, it can’t be a very nice memory.
*****
“Emma! No! Stop! You’ll kill her!” Again and again she saw the knife being plunged into her girlfriend and twisted to open the wounds whilst she stood there helpless to do anything. Then the killer turned and grinned at her as her girlfriend lay dying in a pool of blood at his feet.
*****
“Alia, are you OK?”
“I..I..I would like to tell you everything but I can’t, I just can’t. Thank you for saving me from that, that thing. I’ll remember to be very careful after dark. G…goodbye.”
She shut the door and walked upstairs to her bedroom.
It's not much of a house. In fact it's just a small flat, nothing like they promised they would get for me. Nothing like the house I once shared with Emma before they…don’t think about it, Tara Maclay…Alia, your name is Alia now, Alia Baylee. . Using your old name could very well get you killed. Don’t think about what they did to you or you’ll get depressed and end up either spaced out on anti-depressants or lying around in a drunken stupor with empty vodka bottles all around you, trying to forget. This is the first day of the rest of your life. Tell it to yourself, go on.
“Alia Baylee, this is the first day of the rest of your life.”
She ate some cookies and settled down to sleep.
I wish I had invited that Willow girl in, she seemed so nice and she probably saved my life from whatever that monster was. But I don’t know her, I can’t trust her, at least not yet, and they warned me often enough, they said it loud and clear. The most important rule of the witness protection program is not to tell anyone that you are in the witness protection program, or the story will leak out and then you won’t be protected anymore. It was either this or go and stay with your not so well known friends until they got fed up with you and threw you out, followed by life in a shelter for the homeless. That or joining your girlfriend in death, and most likely being tortured slowly first.
*****
She was dancing with Emma in her arms under a starlit sky. A strange balding man with glasses came up to her. “Would you like some tasty cheese?” She shook her head and turned back to her girlfriend. Emma grinned at her, and then began to decompose. Her veins turned greenish blue, her skin turned white, then greenish gray, and then rotted away to bone. Her eyes popped, turned milky white, and shrivelled away. Her smile turned to that of a skull, and then she crumbled away into dust and from the dust came flame and she was writhing and choking and burning…
*****
She opened her eyes and blinked, as a chink of light was shining through the curtains onto them.
I hate those horrible nightmares. When will they ever end? I don’t want to get out of bed but I have to, to start yet another day of my life without my girlfriend who lies there in the cold hard ground back in Alabama. Time to put my brown contact lenses in and start my day.
I'm a bit worried about what that device of Jonathan's going to do, though!
